


Along the Fault Lines.

by 9_of_Clubs



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst and Smut, Bev is definitely in charge in this relationship, Bev is pining, Bittersweet, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Hannibal is pining, Kannibalz is my pet rare pair, Possibly Unrequited Love, The only answer is, and likes Hannibal on his knees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_of_Clubs/pseuds/9_of_Clubs
Summary: And he looks good like that, he looks good all messed up, she’s pleased with a touch of her own smugness to be responsible, to bring him down to her, maybe just a touch to destroy him, crack the uncrackable.   Gotchya. --Or - Hannibev (Kannibalz ;) ) is my favorite and they clash just ever so well.





	

The knock on her door comes unexpected, and truth be told, she’s surprised there’s a knock at all, it’s more of an announcement,  _ Here I am, answer me,  _ really, though, which is more along the lines of about what she’d figure. But since it’s there and not just an unceremonious entrance that necessarily needs to be dealt with, she has half a mind to ignore it altogether.

It’d be  _ rude  _ to barge in without invitation, right, Hannibal? 

She was  _ going to  _ Wallow. Ripped jeans, too big jersey she’d stolen from some what’s his name fling a couple summers ago, comfort clothes and silence. There’s ice cream somewhere, but it’s been a long week and just lying on her ass for a couple of hours seemed like a good enough solution to woe for the moment. She hadn’t made it much past dropping her bag onto the floor and kicking off her shoes since she’d trudged home after last class. And only she has classes on Friday, fucking Crawford and his  _ this will look good on your transcript, Beverly.  _

But the knock is there and it comes again.

“Fine, fine.” She’s hopped over to the door to flip the lock and made it back to the couch in record time, small room gotta come with some perks. “It’s open.” 

It’s not that she’s surprised to see Hannibal, hell, she likes Hannibal at this point, more or less, pretty much, okay, the dolt has grown on her, not that she’d tell him exactly, but he’s distinctly missing a chunk and she frowns without thinking.

“Where's Will?”

There's almost nothing that passes across his face - the barest flinch of tightness, a flutter of distaste in the thinning of lips. On anyone else it would have been mild unhappiness, on him... It's the stilling of his tongue that really warns of trouble.

A slow blink at her, the acute sensation that he thinks she’s being obtuse purposefully. But then shoulders go straight, one vertebrae tensing after the other as he pulls himself tall in her doorway, shadows dancing across his face. 

“On a date.” He says finally, as though the syllables are jagged along their edges. “With -” Vexation, and she leans forward, wondering if he’ll do it. But he concedes, unhappily, Hannibal unhappily. Flare of nostril and purse of lip. “Her.” 

For a beat of breath he’s lost in himself, somewhere far maybe, definitely not here in this little room, but all at once he’s back, smaller somehow than usual, but still taking up all her air.

“And where is Alana?”

Touché.

But they don't treat each other with kid gloves, and maybe he thinks he’s tough, but she’s not the one with fault lines in her china pretending everything is whole. At least she’s willing to acknowledge this sucks, and suck it up. She rolls her eyes.

"On a date." Drily, her arms crossing across her chest, eyes flaring up to find his, bullshit gets called out. Below the belt prods are for someone else. "Make you feel better that you're not the only being ditched?"

"Yes." It's coated in honey to invite ire, low hanging fruit, but there's just enough hollow in the words that she lets it go, something absurdly honest enough in his sentiment that she can’t fault him. Misery, company. Which one of them is which? She gives up the wallow by herself plan with a sigh, and trades it in for wallow with someone else. She won’t be pushed into something she’s not about, that’s not her way, but she’s okay to be flexible, for now. Another bound up as she uncurls her legs from underneath her, necessary evil in order to head for the fridge.

He lets himself in further as she walks, and she can almost feel agitation crawling beneath her skin as she watches his hands out of the corner of her eye, sees them reach for the blanket tossed haphazardly across the sofa, she knows he’s folding it even as she turns her back.

"Drop it, Lecter." All the rumpled lines in Will's room have mysteriously vanished into straight edges of late, funnily enough, and  _ she  _ doesn't need to be Lecterified, thank you very much. "You came to cry on my turf."

"I am not crying." The words are pitched in a distinct huff, but the blanket is satisfyingly hanging off the edge of the couch when she’s facing him again, two beers in hand. He eyes those too, distaste forming words behind those stupid perfect cheekbones, and she grins callously back. 

"Yum, yum, I know." The room is crossed in half steps and she presses one into his hand. "Alcohol, Lecter, you'll drink it and you'll like it."

"Alcohol is about the only name this deserves." He tells her as his fingers work it open and she laughs, tipping herself back onto the cushions, it comes out, but strains a little exhausted. She gives her neck reign to give away the weight of her skull, and her head tips back against the pillows so she can eye him sideways when he tastes it, gingerly, as though this is the first god damn time he’s had a beer from a twelve pack. “And perhaps barely that.”

Well it’s not her first choice either and Alana’s head would probably explode, but she’s not here, and this is what is, so she doesn’t want to hear a word about it. Hannibal should have brought something with him if he was so damn concerned about it.  Frustration rises momentarily, but she exhales it out, and Hannibal’s second sip comes just in time to send her back somewhere more evenly amused; he does appalled gracefully, but in her cozy little nest, it sticks out so abruptly it’s comical. She resets her armor and takes aim again.  

"Well, I'm sure Franklyn has something better in that fancy pants suite of his." The straight face gets a valiant go, but the laughter colors cracks in her voice. "Want me to give him a call? I could tell him you're  _ lonely  _ and I'm just too cruel. Bet he's dying for a chance to try to rescue  you from your woe."

Hannibal's gaze finds hers slowly and she feels a preternatural thrill rushing up her bare arms as he glares. 

The moment drenches heavy, winds up and soaks into her skin, lasts just a beat too long, so she pushes it away. "Oh yes, Mr. Let's dissect swans, but oh dear god hide me when I even mention -"

"You would wish to be hidden too." The sulk creeps back and his eyes flash away, danger dialing back. "But perhaps you are right, we should invite such  _ welcome  _ distractions as you suggest, I am certain that Brian would enjoying hearing the opinions you expressed about him last Saturday night."

Eyebrow up, Saturday night, god, that was the tequila night wasn't it… So turns out, last week not such a great week either.  

"About how much you would like to see him in a silken -"

She's got a hand over his mouth before there's another word out and he's smirking at her from behind her palm, she can feel the curving of lips as they drag up and she puts a little force into it as she pushes away, shoving him back, maybe, playfully, maybe, with a dig of nail, before she has a finger in his face instead.

"Low blows are for losers."

And then it's back to her side of the space, contemplating the slight muss of his hair behind her beer. 

"And drunken confessions are taken to the grave. I know you're from weirdo planet and missed that crucial part of your education, but that's okay, college is for learning."

His fingers curve slow across his own drink and a long grimacing swallow follows it.

"I suppose I will allow you to teach me." He shakes the can, empty, she pretends not to be impressed. "But it will be hard to appropriately study the theory if we intended to keep drinking these." It lilts half promising, half pleading, a whole lot of, there’s no fucking way you’re getting me to drink another one of these things and she sighs.

Drunken wallowing it is.

\--

He's not really drunk, amendment, drunk probably, but not as drunk as he should be, as far down the bottle as they've gotten, tossing back the whiskey he'd wordlessly chosen because she knows it's Will's favorite cheap stuff, and also she knows, she’s good for the knowing tonight, it seems, for a fact that Hannibal has referred to it as vile on no less than fifty separate occasions in the time they've know each other.

But ghosts are better acknowledged or something, and she pours it for him so he can taste the burn of it down his tongue.

He's lost the jacket but not the tie, nerd, affection paints it warmer than alcohol, nerd, nerd, nerd, and there’s nothing softened about his gaze, though maybe the brittle ache is stronger and something kind of like a smile creeps easier across his lips.

She watches them in her daze and maybe forgets to wonder what Margot and Alana are doing. Maybe. 

She thinks it’s possible she loves him a little, right now, in the soft lamp light, filling the empty spaces of the evening. She thinks maybe passing the night with them empty would have been fine, but it could be that this is better.

Some sort of elaborate scheme of a lie and typically, she’s a realist, says it like it is, feels it like it is, knives and all. But Hannibal wants to wrap it up in a pretty bow, appears from nowhere to pretend that neither of them are alone, and maybe they’re not. Here they are, after all, side by side, with each other. 

"Do you think that he knows?" His words twist low into the room, dance barren and beautiful, and she wonders what he's done to the drink to warp her thoughts like this.

"That you worship the ground he walks on?" She snorts, shaking her head. "I don't know Lecter, did you get your head out of your convoluted daydreams, otherwise known as your ass, long enough to tell him?"

"Yes." The response is more sound than word, the first trills of a growl.

She laughs again despite the danger and eases closer,

"Yeah? In English? Or in Hannibal?"

There’s no answer in her ears, but inside the vastness of silence, the dark whispers, scratching, that Will was supposed to understand either, anyway.

And there's really nothing she can say to explain that, because she's not sure she gets it, exactly. Except that Hannibal is difficult at his best and a thousand kinds of messed up, and Will isn't far off both of those himself, they'd be beautiful, probably, and then the world would explode, or they would, she thinks about them together and the thoughts sears flames through her mind. Maybe Will doesn’t want to burn, maybe he does too much.

"Yeah, okay." Because that’s all she’s got and as he turns towards her, stormy eyed and the Hannibal version of sad, something entitled laced in furious, mixed up in dark, gleaming, anguish that seeps through unbidden and unwanted, and, maybe - she's a little bit of a force herself, tonight, because she wants to drag her fingers through it, wrench up the carnage and wade through the blood, because she leans in and kisses him.

The world doesn't explode - for which she's grateful and he stiffens, a thousand calculations in a place she can’t traverse. It's not kissing Alana, soft known planes and a shock of playful aggression, maybe her hands are bleeding on his cheeks, less fireworks and more dashing herself on cliffs, but he's curious enough to let them clash, and yields to her with only a slight push back as she presses herself closer.  Fingers wrench roughly through his hair on pure adrenaline, a handful twisting into her grasp and so she yanks.

His lip curves and curls, shifts into a snarl as they part for breath, glittering gaze flitted up at her, heavy rise and fall of his chest. 

"What do you want, Lecter?" The breathes rustle out of her, turn into something like chuckles. Shock response, laughter. 

He doesn't answer, so she yanks again, some indescribable mix of triumph and heady pleasure overwhelming as he inhales sharp into her touch, lips parting with an arch of neck.

She'd ask again, but why waste words? They'd take an hour to come out anyway, and end up being something so prosaically incomprehensible they may as well not have bothered in the first place. Save that for someone who’d appreciate it. Save that for…

It’s him who rattles her out of the thoughts this time, moves out of grasp so she instinctively tightens it, and there’s smugness touching him as she pulls and he stutters slight on a breath. 

“What is it that  _ you  _ want -” His voice is thick and low, sleek without warning. “Miss Katz.” A teasing mockery of her words turned back on her, the ever present distant amusement as though he’s sharing a joke only with himself. But he’s not by himself, he’s with her, she draws her hand through his hair, rough - and then reaches for the ridiculous tie and gets rid of it, quick work with the buttons of his shirt but she leaves it over his shoulders, hanging. He seems less out of place now, a little more worn, a little more welcome.

And he looks good like that, he looks good all messed up, she’s pleased with a touch of her own smugness to be responsible, to bring him down to her, maybe just a touch to destroy him,  crack the uncrackable.  _ Gotchya.  _

“You still have hands, right?” It comes out exasperated, but loses the end because she’s kissing him again, but come on, she’s made it as textbook as you can get, one loose t-shirt, no bra, easy pickings for even the hardest headed jock monkey alive, but Mr. Paragon of Genius Itself Lecter needs a written invitation. 

On second thought, maybe that makes sense. He probably expects it in cursive. 

But she kind of likes it though, that he’s pliant under her mouth, under the scratch of her nails, he  _ does  _ have hands it turns out, but she gets the feeling he’s happier letting her do as she will and tumbling through the waves of pleasure and pain as they come.  And that’s what she wants right now, she wants to grab ahold of this crummy day, of this crummy week, of him and his crummy interrupting face, crumple all of it under her fingers and push it into something she likes better. 

And maybe what he wants for once is to think a little less, maybe not at all, maybe just about the way she twists him with one hand, back to yanking, forcing his neck to bend almost too far in a direction it’s not meant to go, so she can mouth at the hollow of his neck as the other one creeps down, wraps slow and teases. 

Maybe he thinks if she twists far enough, he’ll fall out of his own head for a while.

She’s wanted to be someone else a million times throughout her life, bad hair days, bad friend days, broken arms and broken hearts. But it strikes her with a sudden urgency that has his whole body gracefully contorting underneath her tightening hand, maybe this is the first time the particularity of that thought has ever occurred to him.

She wonders what that feels like. And then wonders what  _ this  _ feels like on top of it. Concludes she never wants to know and lets him go with a smirk, hard and aching, falls back with a crook of her hand and allows his teeth, despite a chord of warning, to press sharp into the soft stretches of her body. 

His old fashioned insistence on chivalry has never really worked for her, an eye roll at door opened, or drink paid for, or maybe he’d do it for anyone, in a certain kind of mood, and she’s never exactly envisioned him as selfless, but he’s _good_ , with his head between her legs and her hand not exactly pulling, risky business, down there, but coaxing, fluttering across him, and man she’s equal opportunity with most of the people she’s with, but there’s something about bending Hannibal to the floor that _does_ work for her. Works really fucking well, as she smooths out his hair in some play at gentleness that’s not between them, the illusion of it in the caress making it better somehow, some breath stealing sort of mockery in the motion, her hips working up into his tongue, riding herself out against him.

Against him on his knees. 

Wicked tongue put to good use at long last.

And it’s almost as satisfying...maybe, almost as satisfying, to press up behind him, loose limbed and sweaty, hair a tangled mess against his shoulder, lips kissing along the lines she’s already left, almost as satisfying then, to wrap around him, surrounding, she’s small against him, but she shapes him, around him, and drag an arm across his chest and down, shoving his legs apart with a press to get a better grip, to undo him slowly... Maybe not in that deep, enchanting way that happens when his eyes meet Will’s and some indecipherable turn of phrase that echoes only in their ears passes between them, sweeps them off somewhere far and away, but here, somewhere between his fantasy and her reality, in a primal, hungry way, to drive him beyond himself, insistently pushing, here she holds him and watches the shatters form around the fault lines.   
  
  



End file.
